How to get your photos into Flickr Explore

I had a lot of my recent photos in Flickr Explore selection, and I got questions how I got them there. It really hard to answer, as Flickr tells you nothing about how they choose the photos. It’s mostly quite a surprise when a photo gets there. But here are a few tips, which when I started following, I got more photos into explore.

• Take good photos. The more views, comments and faves you get, the sooner you get explored. Also if the photo looks interesting as a small thumbnail, the more hits you get.
• Share links to your photos on other sites, as Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and similar.
• Forget about Flickr groups. There is a penalty for adding your photo to a group. I never had a single explored photo, while I added them to a group.
• Add a single photo a day. Only one of you photos can be explored and you are maximizing you chance by adding only one.
• Add your photo in the morning. I usually do that at 10AM my local time (central Europe) which is sometime very early morning in US.
• Tag your photos with relevant tags. This will maximize you change getting views from searches.
• Geo-tag your photos. Again, this will help you get views.
• Be active on Flickr. Don’t hesitate to comment and fave other people photos. I already have few thousand favorites.
• Add a description to your photo. No description will make you look lazy, too much description and nobody will read it. Few lines is enough. The more interesting description, the more comments you will get.

This may help you, but may not. It will just make your changes greater. What helps the most is having a lot of Flickr contacts, as your photo will show up to them when they visit Flickr.

You can also check if your photos got explored here http://bighugelabs.com/scout.php or here http://lab.bernatcasero.com/?lang=en

Best luck to you all on getting your photos explored :)

Passage

Always when I see arches, I center my photos. I really like the symmetry in such shots :) Another thing what I did here is double tonemapping. It brought out really a lot of detail in the walls. I took this photo last week, while taking a little photo walk in Bratislava Old town.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Two times 300 000

Just weeks from each other, my flickr account and my smugmug porfolio, booth reached 300 000 views. Thank you everyone for your support and your visits to my photos :) Thank you :)

Blue hour in Trnava

It looked that I will have a ugly grey sky, but right around sunset the sky cleared nicely. This photo is from Trnava, a city around 30 minutes drive from Bratislava. It quite strange that I haven’t been there before, as I have passed around it maybe 100 times.

In this photo the St.Mikulas Church in Trnava.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Facebook page

I still cant decide, whats a better way to publish my photos on Facebook. I have booth, a fan page http://www.facebook.com/hdrshooter and a personal timeline page http://www.facebook.com/miroslav.petrasko 

I think the timeline looks better, but again, the page already has over 500 fans. I wish they would change the pages, giving a little more customization options (and bigger photo previews). What do you all think?

Path through the Botanical Garden

A simple photo, compared to the one I posted yesterday. But nice :). Something to remind us, that the summer is not so far away. Photo taken last summer in the Botanical Garden in Bratislava.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, handheld.

Explore Front page

This was quite a surprise for me. A second photo this week got onto the front page of Flickr explore selection. This makes it 5 photos in total that got there. Thank you everyone for visiting, commenting and faving my photos at Flickr :)

Screen in the Liverpool Cathedral

The screen is in the middle. There were preparations for some award show (or something like it) when I was there. So that’s why it was there. I went for a little darker and cooler look for this shot. I also did double tone-mapping here to get even bore details in this shot. For anyone who hasn’t heard of double tone-mapping yet, it means,  that when you process your photo in Photomatix, and you finish, you just hit tone-mapping again. On photos like this, where you have a lot of detail, this can create very nice results.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.

Best comment ever

I get quite a lot of different comments on my photos, but this one has to be the best :) Comment by foxybagga

Dear Earthling,Thanks for clicking a commendable image of the planet we are about to invade soon!After we have destroyed everything on planet Earth – we shall see these pictures and try to copy on our planet – [alien giggle] – The Foxyland!

Entering the Old Castle in Banska Stiavnica

I always tell myself to take the tripod everywhere with me. And still there are instances when I don’t do it, and I always regret it. So this photo was taken only handheld. The speed of the 7D really helped here, as it can take the shots so quick after each other. But the shots from the other side of the castle (in the shadow) are just bad.

HDR from three shots, taken with Canon 7D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, handheld.